Blood orange, carrot and ginger cake

I know I’m a little late posting and you’re probably full in the swing of things for Easter dinner – but if you’re still looking for dessert, this cake is absolutely perfect!

I have been thinking about making carrot cake for a while now, staring at the carrots in my fridge hoping I had a little more time before they started to soften up on their way to the compost bin.

See baking takes time, time that little miss Luna our now almost 6 week old has not let me have lately. But sitting on my thoughts allowed me to come up with a new recipe that turned out to be one of my best!

Clint and I both love carrot cake, but I wanted to do something a little different this time around – so I decided to incorporate the beautiful blood oranges I’ve been stuffing my face with lately. And so the recipe was born.

INGREDIENTS

CAKE

2 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup Greek yogurt

1/2 cup raw honey

zest from one blood orange

juice from two blood oranges

1 cup grated carrots

2 tsp. grated ginger

2 eggs

1/2 cup melted coconut oil

GLAZE (OPTIONAL)

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 tbsp. Greek yogurt

Juice from one blood orange

1 tbsp. honey

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a bundt pan. I used a mini bundt cake pan that has 6 smaller cakes – either works fine.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking power, baking soda, and salt.

In a large bowl whisk together the yogurt, honey, and eggs. Once well combined, stir in the blood orange juice, zest, grated carrot and ginger.

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined.

Use a spatula to fold in the melted coconut oil until it is fully incorporated.

Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for approximately 45 min. (check at 30 min.) or until the middle is set and a toothpick comes out dry.

While the cake is baking, mix together the yogurt, powdered sugar, honey and blood orange juice to form the cake glaze.

Let the cake cool for 10-15 min. then gently remove the cake(s) and let finish cooling on cooling rack.

Once cooled drizzle the glaze over top, let the glaze set (approx. 15-20 min.) slice (if you are using the large bundt cake pan) and serve.

This cake is definitely a new favourite – it is moist, tangy and carries a little zip from the ginger. It is great with the sweet glaze, but if you’re looking to knock out the refined sugar, it is delicious without too! Or alternatively if you still want that little extra sweet punch – you could mix together double the amount of the ingredients for the glaze but leave out the powdered sugar – it is just as delicious, but will be quite a bit thinner and won’t set the same.